Google removed 350 million ads in 2013

Google made an announcement on the AdWords blog that they have removed ads from “bad actors” that abuse their online advertising services. Over 350 million bad ads were removed in 2013. This is up from 220 million bad ads that were removed in 2012.
“We’ve allocated substantial technical, financial, and human resources to stopping bad advertising practices and protecting users on the web. Hundreds of our engineers, policy experts and others have dedicated their careers to this work,” stated Google’s director of ads engineering Mike Hochberg.

The bad ads are coming from fewer sources. Around 270,000 advertisers were banned in 2013 compared to 850,000 in 2012. Google said that there has been a decline in scammers through safety screens.

Google said that the offenders are trying to sell counterfeit goods, illegal pharmaceutical products, malware, tech support scams, and get rich quick schemes.